


Some Normal, Apple Pie Life

by evilhasnever (orphan_account)



Category: Supernatural
Genre: F/M, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-10-20
Updated: 2011-10-20
Packaged: 2017-10-24 19:48:46
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,106
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/267201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/evilhasnever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cas is dead, and Dean has to get him back. So he sets out with brother on the search for God, but the two of them get more than they bargained for.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Some Normal, Apple Pie Life

**Author's Note:**

> I started this fic before season 7 aired, so there are no Leviathans. Anything that's happened in season 7 didn't happen in this universe. Also, I'm sorry for my shitty references; I'm not very clever.

Cas was dead. Really, though, he’d been dead now for a while. He’d died the moment he’d consumed the souls of the monsters in purgatory and been taken over by that thing that called itself God. It was that thing that was riding Jimmy’s meatsuit and making it say and do those things, like a puppeteer controlling a Cas-shaped marionette. Yeah, Cas had been dead long before Dean had stabbed this imposter. Or at least that’s what Dean had convinced himself.

But now the thing was dead; its body lay on the floor of the temple, a shining angel blade sprouting from its chest and wings burnt into the ground around it. It was surrounded by the corpses of innocents, and gore dripped from the walls and ceiling – the remnants of Bobby. Strangely, Dean noticed, the thing had killed Bobby the same way that Lucifer had killed Castiel: a snap of the fingers that caused an explosion of blood and bones. But that meant nothing, surely; how could it?

Weeks after Cas had died and the thing had taken over, the Winchesters and Bobby Singer had tracked down their new enemy, who went to a temple, commanding the worshippers there to “believe or die.” That had Cas written all over it, with his misunderstanding of the workings of humanity. Believe or die, as if humans would change that easily. But Dean pushed that particular thought to the back of his mind; thoughts like that one would only make it harder to kill this bastard. And this thing was not Cas. It couldn’t be.

And now here he was, looking down at the body that had once belonged to Jimmy, and then to Cas, and now to no one. It was just an empty vessel. Dead. Looking down at the body, he saw the blade, and finally realized its significance, when before he had blocked it out. He realized what the flash of light had meant. He knew what the wings signified. He looked to Sam to prove him wrong.

“I’m sorry, Dean. But Bobby said—”

“No!” Dean dove to the ground, and grabbed at the lapel of the angel’s stupid coat. He looked up at his brother and tasted bile in his mouth. “He can’t be dead! It wasn’t Cas!” Sam just shook his head. Dean went into a rage and pulled the angel blade out of Cas’s chest, and he shook the angel’s shoulders violently, as if expecting him to wake up. He wouldn’t.

Sam had to drag Dean, kicking and screaming and crying, out of the temple.

 

After Cas’s death, Dean hardly left the local bar in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. Sam stayed at Bobby’s salvage yard during the day, fixing up the Impala, and every night he would take one of the cars Bobby had sitting around and pick up a highly inebriated Dean to bring him back to the house. Dean never protested as Sam shoved aspirin down his throat, stripped him to his boxers, and laid him in a bed with rough, uncomfortable sheets. Every night after Sam put him to bed and he heard the shower start, Dean would allow himself to cry. The next morning he would make his way to the bar and start all over again.

One night Sam picked Dean up from the bar in the Impala. He had a smile on his face as he helped his brother through the parking lot to his car. “I fixed her,” he said, but Dean said nothing as he sat down in the passenger’s seat. He was silent the whole way back to Bobby’s and didn’t even try to change the radio station when Sam put on some crap folk music.

The next morning when Dean tried to go to the bar again, Sam stopped him. “Not today, man. We’re heading out: demonic omens in rural Wisconsin.” Sam held out the keys to the Impala for Dean to take, but Dean didn’t take them. He walked out of Bobby’s house, got into the back seat of the Impala, curled up into the fetal position, and went to sleep.

He slept for six hours in the car before finally waking up in a semi-sober state. “Why the fuck aren’t we there yet?” he asked groggily.

“Because it’s a nine hour drive, Dean.” Sam’s voice, which had been soft and kind to him since the angel’s death, now had a hard edge to it. He was fed up.

“I coulda had us there in five,” Dean complained as he tried to climb into the passenger’s seat. He would do it all the time back when he was a kid. Sam would have fallen asleep in the back, and his dad would have some rock music playing quietly so as not to wake him. Dean, much smaller and more impressionable back then, would climb into the front seat while his dad grumbled about him ruining the leather. Dean could sit in the front seat for hours, trying to learn how to drive just by watching.

“Yeah, well I’m sorry we don’t all have your prowess for doing 125 down side roads.”

“Shaddup,” he said with a smile; it was the first time he’d smiled since they’d found out Cas was working with Crowley. Sam noticed, but didn’t mention it.

After the nine hour car ride, the job in Wisconsin turned out to be a D-List demon – a quick exorcism-and-done. One Latin incantation later, black smoke poured from the poor bastard’s throat, and he was left a whimpering mess on the floor. For the second time that day, Sam caught a glimpse of the carefree joker that his brother used to be before heaven and hell, the angels and the devil. Dean turned to Sam with an expression like the cat who ate the canary and said, “The power of Christ compels you!” while he flicked the remaining drops of holy water in his hipflask at the man.

Sam shot him the look that said, “Seriously, Dean?” and went to help the man up off the ground.

 

In celebration of their kill (and for Sam, the celebration of slowly getting Dean back), the two brothers went to a small bar on a bumpy dirt road to get beers and burgers. Sam was busy playing pool against some bikers to get some cash to pad their wallets, and Dean was slowly drinking a beer. He’d made Sam a promise not to drink too much, and to be fair, he wasn’t looking forward to another massive hangover anytime soon. Next to him on a barstool, was a man passed out on the countertop, drool pooling under his wide open mouth. He reeked of sweat and gasoline and from what Dean could see of his hand, which was still clenching tightly to his beer bottle, it was highly calloused.

He signaled to the bartender to get him another beer, and drained the remaining mouthful in his old bottle. He turned on the stool to watch Sam. Sometimes Dean would look at his brother and remember the old Sammy, who gave him an amulet one Christmas, who rebelled against their father and went to Stanford, who loved a murdered woman. But the man hustling pool in a bar in Wisconsin was not the innocent Sam of the past. He’d drank demon blood to kill demons more powerful than any of others they’d met. He’d dragged two archangels into hell, where his soul had to stay while his body traipsed around the earth. And when he’d finally gotten his soul back, Cas had broken the wall in his head.

But the Winchester line must have immunity to emotional pain, or at least some sort of buffer. Everyone had said that once Sam’s wall was broken, he would be nothing but a quivering mass on the floor, much like the man from whom they’d exercise the demon earlier. But, Sam somehow prevailed over his experiences. He wasn’t exactly the same as he had been before hell, though, just as Dean hadn’t been the same after his stint in hell.

Since his wall had broken, in those two weeks before they’d killed Cas, Dean would come back from a diner to find Sam in the motel room in a sort of fit. It had looked like he was seizing, and he’d bitten through his cheek. Blood had come out of his mouth, and because of the way he was laying on the ground, half of his face was covered in it. There was nothing for Dean to do, and no one to ask – this was one problem not mentioned in medical books. So he just pulled Sammy into his lap and held him until it was over. That had happened four times now, two of which occurred within the first week of the break. He hadn’t had one in a week, and both brothers were hoping it would stay that way.

The bartender handed Dean his new beer just as a woman who reminded Dean of Ellen changed the song on the jukebox in the corner. His foot tapped in time to the familiar song, and his took a sip of his drink. Then his eyes were wide, and he made his shaking hand put down his drink, for fear of dropping it. How had he not thought of it earlier? He looked at his brother, whose back was to him as he tried to get a ball in the corner pocket, and Dean slipped out of the bar as nonchalantly as he could manage. He could hear the song fading as he walked away from the bar to the trunk of the Impala.

 _I went down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees._

They say one of the stages of grief is bargaining, and Dean knows a whole lot more about bargaining than most people. He’d bargained his soul away before and died because of it, for Sammy, and Cas was like family to him. Bobby had once said to him, “Family don’t end with blood, boy.” But Bobby was dead; Dean couldn’t save him. But he was probably in heaven, and he deserved it after all that life had thrown at him. But Cas had no soul; he wasn’t in heaven. Dean had to get Cas back.

Looking at his weapons array, he decided what would best suit his needs. Ruby’s knife was tucked into his belt, a flask of holy water was in his pocket, and the Colt was in a chest holster hidden by his leather jacket. He threw together a box of supernatural items he’d collected over the years and added to it a picture of himself from a fake ID that he no longer used. He slammed shut the trunk, and made his way to the dirt road in front of the bar.

 _Down to the crossroads, fell down on my knees._

He buried the box and waited. Surely some red-eyed bastard out there was stupid enough to come. Suddenly, the streetlight above him flickered, and an attractive man appeared out of nowhere, dressed in a fine suit. Dean was reminded of Crowley.

“Dean Winchester. Back for some more?”

“Yeah. I’m just _dying_ to go back to hell.”

The demon was holding its ground, too cautious to get near to Dean. “What can I help you with?”

“You need to bring somebody back for me.”

The demon laughed, then said, “You and your brother need to be more careful. He just got out of hell a few months ago.”

“It’s not Sam.”

It quirked an eyebrow, and took a step forward, too intrigued to be thinking about its safety. “Then who? Who else does Dean Winchester love enough to die for?”

“Castiel. The angel.”

“Oh-ho-ho, no way, buddy. Even if I had that kind of power, I wouldn’t get within a ten miles of an angel.” The demon had stepped back again, and looked Dean up and down warily.

Dean was done. “You better not be fuckin’ with me.” He paused and watched the demon with a trained eye. “Fine, if you can’t do it, what can?”

“I don’t know. Nothing I know of.” It took another few steps back.

“Then you’re of no use to me,” he said, but the demon was gone before he had gotten the Colt out of its holster. “Son of a bitch!” he yelled to the empty street.

 

Sam had noticed Dean’s absence by now, first checking the bathrooms and then asking the bartender, which led to him coming outside to see Dean digging in the crossroads. It startled him into another fit. It was a particularly violent one, knocking him out after it was finished. “Damn it, Sammy; I’m sorry,” Dean grunted as he dragged the dead weight of his brother into the front seat of the Impala.

He pulled out of the parking lot, dirt spraying up from under the tires, and headed to the motel they were staying at. Getting Sam into the room was much harder than getting him into the car, and it left Dean tired from the effort. He slept for three hours before waking up; Sam was still in his bed, though he didn’t look in pain, as he had earlier. He looked like a child again, his features soft with sleep; Dean hoped he was having good dreams.

Dean went for a piss and then headed down to the lobby for some coffee, so he wouldn’t wake Sam up if he turned the light on. He passed the Impala on the way there, and decided that he wanted his leather jacket. It had always provided him a sense of protection, perhaps because it was one of the few items given to him by his father, the lifelong soldier. He opened the driver’s side door to get the coat draped over the back of the seat, when he saw the book.

It was one of Bobby’s that Sam had taken with them, throwing it in the back seat of the car with their duffel bags full of clothes and some other assorted items that all good hunters require. It was a leather bound tome with gold edging on the pages and the impressed outline of an angel on the cover. One of Bobby’s old bibles. Dean stared at it, stared at the angel, and made the decision to take it with him to the lobby. The angel was haunting him.

Castiel had always said that the world’s holy books got more wrong than they did right, but reading it brought Dean some comfort anyway. Here and there he’d see familiar names. Most were unpleasant reminders of a worse time: Uriel, Lucifer, Michael. But every now and then he’d see Gabriel, and he’d smile.

Bobby had marked certain pages and passages that held some significance to him, but most of these didn’t have any important meaning for Dean. Dean flipped through the book, stopping on random pages and reading a verse or two, then drinking some coffee. Every so often a slip of paper would fall from between pages and land on the lobby floor, and Dean would tuck it back in.

He entered the New Testament before he needed another cup of coffee. The girl behind the desk watched him walk to the coffee machine, and Dean saw her lick her lips. Any other time he would have had her on her back by the end of the night, but he wasn’t in the mood. He hadn’t been for a long time, especially not now after everything that had happened.

The bible was opened up to a page in Hebrews, and a few words caught his eye: “…God was able to raise him up, even from the dead…”

 

After Sam’s recent fit, Dean was reluctant to go on the search for God, even if that meant finding Cas. “Dude, you’re too fragile,” Dean had said to his brother in explanation. Sam interpreted it to mean, “I’m afraid of what’s happening to you, and I love you too much to put you in danger.”

Sam had resisted Dean’s babying. “Dean, I’m fine. This is going to happen, possibly for the rest of my life. We’re gonna have to work around it. I feel fine now, and I think if you don’t go summoning any more crossroads demons and scaring the shit out of me that I’ll be fine.”

Dean muttered, “Yeah, well…” Sam knew his brother meant, “I’m sorry, and I won’t do it again. But I’m still not letting you out of my sight.”

Sam was unable to convince Dean to leave right away, so they were stuck in a podunk town in Wisconsin. Dean would shoot Sam nervous glances every couple of minutes as they ate their Chinese food dinner one week later. “I am not staying in this motel another day. I’m loading up the Impala, and we’re getting the hell out of here,” Sam told his brother.

“I’m getting antsy, too, Sam, but I need you to give me just one more night. We’ll leave in the morning, if you’re still okay then. Last time, there was a week between fits, and I just want to be sure.”

“Alright, fine,” he paused, and a cheeky grin slid onto his face. “But I’m driving.”

 

In the morning, Sam and Dean were in the Impala, windows rolled down and rock music playing softly out of the radio. The autumn air rushed through the car, circulating from the front to the back, cleansing the car and its riders. Sam stretched in the driver’s seat, “It sure is nice to be out of that goddamn motel room.”

“I know. Giving you burritos on Thursday was a bad idea on my part.”

Sam bitchfaced playfully at his brother, and then asked, “So where are we going anyway? I mean if Cas couldn’t find God, why do you think we can?”

“I know it’s probably a dead end, but I have to try.” Sam nodded, eyes focused on the road. Dean continued, “And I was thinking maybe we could see Chuck? I mean we have no more angelic contacts, so he’s the closest we’ve got.”

“You know people always say that I’m the brains of the family, but most of the time I feel like the Watson to your Holmes,” Sam said, and smiled at Dean.

“Shaddup,” Dean shot at him, but he smiled broadly for a few minutes afterward.

The drive to Chuck Shurley’s house was long and mundane. Trees lined the interstate, so the landscape outside was a constant blur of green and brown, broken sometimes by a sign letting drivers know that a waffle house or a truck stop was available up ahead. These came in handy after Dean needed a restroom because the Chinese food from the night before did something funky to his digestive system, as he explained to Sam, who waited for his brother in the lobby area of the rest stop. He’d gotten a drink from the machine and was reading the posters and flyers taped up on the walls.

In general, Sam had noticed, people ignore the “Have You Seen Me?” posters. John had always taught his sons to look closely at these; missing people, when not runaways or kidnapped by some psycho fuck, often indicated supernatural forces were present. His eyes slid over poster after poster, reading names, ages, locations, and other details deemed important enough to include. And then he saw a familiar face, and he was banging on the bathroom door. “Dean we have to go now! Chuck’s missing!”

After seeing the police reports and talking to Chuck’s neighbors and contacts, making the leap wasn’t difficult. Unbelievable, but not difficult. “So all this time,” Dean said, snarling. “Chuck was God? Like water into wine, actually fucking God?”

“Well, that was Jesu—”

“I don’t care if it was the fucking Easter Bunny! That son of a bitch was right here all along, and he just let it happen. He wrote a story about it and phoned up a sex line. What about all the other times he saved Cas? Why is now different?” Dean was digging his nails into the steering wheel, knuckles viciously white. “Fuck!” he exclaimed finally, punching the top of the wheel.

“Look, Dean, calm down. I know you’re pissed, but if you’re serious about finding him, you’re going to need a clear head. It’s gonna be hard,” Sam said logically from the passenger’s seat, where he was flipping through an English translation of the Qur’an.

“I know that,” Dean snapped, but then took a deep breath and tried to calm down. “But you’re right. This is just…”

“I hear you, man.”

 

Finding God was even harder than the Winchesters had expected. They summoned demons, asked other hunters, and read every piece of scripture they could find, but there was nothing. It was only after they exhausted every idea they’d come up with that they decided to summon Crowley. Dean was immediately against the idea. “It’s his fault that Cas did what he did, Sam,” he’d said at the mention of it, but he knew it was the only option left to them.

Armed with an abundance of devil’s traps, a gun that can kill almost anything, and a summoning ritual, Sam and Dean called upon Crowley. He arrived, dressed in a suit, blood splattered on his white shirt. “Great, just who I wanted to see: Mitchell and Webb.” Sam and Dean exchanged confused looks.

“…Right,” Sam said slowly.

“Let’s cut to the chase,” Dean interrupted with a snarl on his lips. “Do you know how to find God?”

“Well on the way here I passed a church that said they could help you do just that. If that’ll be all then, I’ll just—”

“Very funny, asshat. Now answer the question.” Dean gave the colt a twirl, letting Crowley know just how much bullshit he was willing to put up with.

“No idea,” Crowley said quickly. “But there is something I can do for you if you let me go. Don’t you want your angel boyfriend back?”

Dean took a step forward and opened his mouth, but Sam dragged him into the next room before he could do anything he’d regret. “We can’t trust him. Remember what he did to Bobby.”

“I know that,” replied Dean. “But I want to know what he has to say. If it something worth making a deal over, we’ll ask to sample his merchandise. If he gives us something we want, we take it, and then shoot him. If it’s not good enough, we shoot him. Win-win.”

Sam was shaking his head. “I don’t think it’s gonna be that easy.”

“Live a little, Sammy.” Sam could see the manic glint in his brother’s eye as he walked away. There was nothing that could stop Dean when he got like this, save a blow to the head.

Crowley was obviously feeling like he was winning after Dean said he wanted to deal. “But first,” Dean said. “We want to see that you can do it. Bring Cas back first.” Crowley started to protest, but Dean cut him off, fingering the Colt at his side. “You’re really not in the position to be negotiating the terms of this deal. You do what I say.”

Crowley shrugged. “Yes, master,” he drawled with an exaggerated bow.

“Just bring Cas back,” Dean commanded.

Without even blinking, Crowley did it. There was no flash of light or gaudy show of it; Suddenly, Cas was just there. So Dean shot Crowley in the forehead. Crowley didn’t even have a chance to fight; it was like shooting a fish in a barrel. The body of whoever it was that Crowley had possessed crumpled to the floor in the center of the devil’s trap.

“Cas!” Dean cried, and ran to him. As if it were the most natural thing in the world, he wrapped his arms around the angel and squeezed him. He started babbling. “I’m sorry, I should have listened to you, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to kill you, I shouldn’t have done it, I love you!” Through the tears that had started, he choked out the last part, coming unbidden, but justified. Necessary.

But Castiel was unresponsive. He stood there, looking up at Dean, confusion written all over his face. Sam watched on in dawning horror. Cas had no idea who they were. “Dean?” he said cautiously, imploring his brother to see that this was all wrong. Everything was all wrong, and it would never be right again.

 

Cas, it turned out, was no longer an angel. Crowley had the power to bring back Cas’s – Jimmy’s, really – body, but recreating an angel’s grace, well, that was no demonic power. So Dean had Cas back, in a sense, but he held no memories of their times together and had none of the powers that Cas had. He was an empty shell.

Sam drove the Impala now; Dean couldn’t bring himself to get in the driver’s seat and look into the rearview mirror to see Cas sitting in the backseat staring out the window. In the motel room while on a hunt, Sam and Dean shared a bed like they had as children and Cas had one to himself. In the beginning, he only spoke when spoken to.

Sam and Dean both knew that the only way to fix this was to find God, but they’d exhausted all of their resources the first time around. They had no idea where to even start. So they killed as many monsters as they could, but none of it could fill the hole in their lives. Nothing made it better.

It was summer now, nearly a year after Cas had come back. He’d gotten to know the Winchester brothers, and would talk more now, feeling more comfortable around them. But it was different from before for Sam and Dean. They were civil to him, and protected him with everything they had, but there was no love there, not like before.

Every night Sam would pray to God to help them, but no help ever came. Dean could tell he was giving up hope.

One night after a vicious battle with a wendigo somewhere in Wyoming, Cas and Sam had fallen asleep in their motel room, exhausted from the day’s work. Dean was tired as well, but the gouges on his back from the wendigo’s claws were throbbing and he couldn’t get comfortable enough to sleep. He got up from the bed where Sam was snoring slightly and went to the bathroom to clean the wounds again.

His blood had seeped through the gauze, so he cleaned it again in front of the sink. He was regretting not letting his brother sew the cuts up when he’d offered earlier. Too late now though, they were already clotting in some areas, and he wasn’t going to wake up Sammy now when he was finally getting some shut eye. Instead he bandaged the wound as best he could and went outside.

He reclined on the hood of the Impala, staring at the stars. He fit against the car in such a perfect way, like the way you’re supposed to with a lover. Sitting on the Impala, where he’d grown up, in his father’s replacement for a stable home environment, he felt at home. Other people had memories of a house with a dog and stupid white fence, but Dean’s memories were much more perfect. He remembered the roar of the engine, the smell of oil and gasoline, and the feel of the leather seats against his face as he slept in the backseat, holding his brother. This car was familiar in the way a small town in familiar to those people who were born, lived, and died there. Sure, Dean had moved around more often than he’d have liked, but this car, this car and the people inside it, were his constants in life. And he wouldn’t change that for anything.

But one of the people he loved was missing. Cas. Sure his body – his vessel – was alive and kicking, but Cas wasn’t there. He was dead. Not in heaven, dead. And Dean needed to fix that.

“I don’t know where you are, or what you’re doing, but I’m down here, and I need your help, you piece of shit. You’ve never helped us before; you let us suffer through everything alone. Our mother dying, monsters and demons, the fucking apocalypse. And now Cas is dead, and you decided not to bring him back this one last time. You owe us this. We deserve to be happy.”

“You do deserve to be happy, Dean,” a voice said from his left.

“Well, I suppose,” God said. “I just like this vessel too much to get a new one.” Seeing the look on Dean’s face and completely misinterpreting its meaning, he said, “Don’t worry, Chuck Shurley isn’t in here with me. He’s in heaven.”

“Oh, what a relief,” Dean sneered. “Why are you here now? Sam’s been praying to you for months about this. Why didn’t you come to him.”

“Because you weren’t ready.”

“Ready for what?”

“For me to bring Cas back.”

Dean’s body was burning as the anger raged inside of him. “What the fuck do you mean I wasn’t ready? I—I love Cas. Since he died, it’s been like hell. And I know about Hell.”

God looked down, almost ashamed, “I know you’ve been to hell, Dean. And I am sorry.”

“Don’t give me that. Just fix this.”

“I will fix this. All of it. Everything you prayed to me about.”

“Wait, all of it? What do you… No, you can’t do that. I won’t let you!” Suddenly Dean was judging the distance between him and God. He could make it there in a couple of seconds, but what did he do when he got there? Punch God? How could he make him stop?

“I’m sorry Dean, but this is how it’s going to be. I have to fix this.”

Dean had been halfway to him when he froze in place in a running position. “Look Dean, you can still hear me, but you can’t move. It’s going to be better this way, I promise. I was an awful father before, and now I’m trying to atone for my sins. I’ve gotten rid of the angels. It’s not like I’ve killed them; I’ve just made them to never have existed. And I’ve done the same for the demons and the monsters. I’ve been kind of selfish, saving you and your brother for last. It’s… Well, I’ve been embarrassed. You two have done so much for me, for this world, and I’ve done so little for you in return. I just want to make you both happy, to show my gratitude and to thank you.”

The flash of white light erupted from where God stood. If anyone had been watching, they might have wondered where the two men had gone. And if they looked really hard, they might have noticed that they had disappeared along with the two men sleeping in the motel room. Only the Impala remained.

 

Dean and Castiel were sitting on the couch in their apartment in Lawrence, Kansas. “I cannot believe you are making me watch this,” Dean complained, gesturing to the television, where two cops were chasing a man down an alleyway. “It’s a procedural cop show. I hate procedural cop shows.”

“It’s payback for all those hours of car restoration programs,” Cas shot back.

Dean opened his mouth to protest, but the phone began to ring. Cas looked back at the TV in triumph, and Dean grumbled and stood up, “It’s Sam,” he told Cas, reading the Caller ID; Cas muted the television. “Hey, Sammy, what’s up?… What? Oh my God…. Yeah we’ll head out there now.” He hung up.

“What’s wrong?” Cas asked from his position on the couch.

“Jess went into early labor. Put your shoes on; we’re going to the airport.”

It was times like this that Dean wished he had a half decent car, one that didn’t run on the farts of Pandas for Christ’s sake. It’s not like he couldn’t afford it: engineers made good money, after all. But Cas had insisted that he not buy some gas guzzler, as they would be sharing the car to save on gas, so now Dean was stuck with a fucking Prius, something he swore he’d never buy.

Flying to California was not cheap, especially for a last minute flight. But Sam was one of the most important things in Dean’s life, and it was worth it.

When Sam came out of the birthing room, he ran over to Dean and gave him a massive hug. He did the same to Cas, and then to Mary and John.

“How’s the baby? Healthy? Is it a boy or a girl?” Mary asked, wiping at her eyes.

“No, everything’s fine. It’s a boy. We named it Robert.”

“Robert, why Robert?” Dean asked, quirking an eyebrow. Cas smacked him on the arm and gave him a look.

“Well we were gonna call him Bobby,” Sam said, defensively. “And I don’t really know why, I just liked it, so it stuck.”

“Bobby…” Cas said thoughtfully.

“Can we see him?” John asked, and clapped an arm on Sam’s shoulder.

Dean and Sam walked behind the rest of the group, and Dean knocked his shoulder into his brother’s. “How in hell are you gonna deal with a newborn and law school?”

Sam looked as if he had been contemplating that exact question since Jess had announced that she was pregnant, and said in a low voice, “I have no frigging idea.”

“Eh—You’ll figure it out. Look at you: a dad. It’s all baby barf and rainbows from here on out, man.”

Sam smiled broadly as he walked into the room that for just one moment, held everything in the world he cared about.

 

A few years later, when Castiel was sent back to Afghanistan, Dean managed to get a position working near Sam and flew out to California, where Sam lived with Jess, Bobby, and their three year old twins, Ellen and Jo. He couldn’t be in that apartment alone again. He was planning on staying in a cheap motel or apartment for the duration of his stay, so he could keep the apartment in Kansas, but Jess had put her foot down. “Absolutely not! I will not let you stay in some dump while we have a perfectly good guest room for you to use.”

While going for his morning jog one day, as he did with Cas nearly every morning, Dean passed a used car lot, and saw a car that he had to have. It was rusted and dented, one of the mirrors was barely hanging on, and Dean was almost positive it wouldn’t run it its current condition. But she could be a beauty if he fixed her up right. And it’s not like he was just out of college anymore, he’d been earning a six-figure salary for a couple of years now, and had quite a nice amount of money in his bank account. That Impala was his.

It was a week later that Dean secured a spot in Sam’s garage for the car and got it transported there. Every day, no matter how tired he was, Dean tried to work on the car at least a little bit. Often he was joined by Sam, who brought beers, and they would talk and laugh and get no repairs done. Sometimes he was visited by Jess, who would give him homemade cookies and point out some mistake he had made. But his most frequent visitor was little Bobby, who, at five years old, had a Hot Wheels collection that even Dean was jealous of.

Bobby would ask Dean question after question about spark plugs and ball bearings and radiators. And Dean would always try to answer in a way that the kid could understand, without treating him like an invalid.

Sometimes their conversations would stray from auto mechanics, like the time Bobby asked Dean where Cas was and why Dean wasn’t with him.

“Cas is a soldier, buddy,” Dean said from his position under the car. “He’s at war.”

“Why are there wars, Uncle Dean?”

“That’s a complicated question,” he replied, wheeling himself out from under the car with his plastic creeper. “Why don’t we go outside for a bit and talk?” He grabbed a Sprite for Bobby and a beer for himself and led them into the front yard.

“Do you love your parents and your sisters?” Dean asked the little boy, as they lay in the grass, looking at the stars.

“Yes.”

“Do you fight with them sometimes?”

“Yeah.”

“But you still love them, right?”

“Yes.” Bobby was silent, thinking.

“War’s like that, kiddo. Us humans, we’re all a big family, and we do love each other. But sometimes we fight over stupid stuff, and instead of forgiving each other, we keep fighting to prove we’re right. And these fights spiral out of control and make monsters out of men, and people die when they don’t deserve to. Cas is a soldier because he wants to help people; he believes in people. But sometimes, to help people he has to hurt other people. And he hates it, but he has to do it.”

Bobby was silent for a few minutes after this, watching a cloud drift in front of the quarter moon. “How did you meet Cas?” Bobby asked.

Dean chuckled. “I was younger than you are now. Your dad was just a baby, and I was in preschool. One day Castiel wasn’t there and the next he was. Moved to Kansas from somewhere stupid. Class was much more fun after that. We became friends, and stayed that way. After high school, we both went to college in Lawrence, and rented an apartment together to cut costs. And after college, we just sort of stayed that way. Until Cas joined the air force – he always did love to fly – and was deployed for the first time. That was before you were born. That was awful time, being alone in that apartment, not knowing if Cas was even alive. But he came back, a little shaken up, but okay. And then you were born, and then your sisters, too. And now Cas is back overseas. So I came here to stay with you guys until he comes back.”

“Do you love Cas?”

“Of course I do. Don’t you?”

“Yes, but I love Cas like I love you. I think you love Cas like daddy loves mommy.”

Dean sputtered into his drink. “Wh—What gives you that idea?”

“You just act like mommy and daddy do when you’re together. You smile more.”

It was Dean’s turn to be silent. He studied the heavens, fitting stars together to make shapes. A car, a man, an angel. “You’re right, Bobby. I do love Cas like that.”

 

When Castiel came home a year later, Dean drove back to Kansas from California in his shiny black car. If gay marriage was legal in his home state, Dean would have proposed there and then, before he told Castiel how he felt, before he’d even kissed him. But he didn’t. Instead he put a roast in the oven and got his best friend from the airport. It was only later that he kissed him. And later still that he told him exactly how he felt. And much, much later that they married.

Dean dies in his 60’s of a heart attack; he’d loved his burgers, beers, and pie too much to give them up. Cas died a few months later, unable or unwilling to continue without him.

Sam doesn’t cope after his brother’s death. He withdraws from his family life and his job, and with the kids no longer living at home, Jess feels abandoned. She leaves him after a few years.

Sam lives in a shitty apartment on his own, living out the rest of his life on his pension. Dean left him his car, and sometimes, Sam will take her out for a spin, the roar of her engine in his ears as the wind whips through his hair. But it doesn’t feel right in the Impala without Dean.

Sam is bitter and alone. He dies in his late 80’s.

 

Sam’s eyes open, and surrounding him is darkness. There is grass beneath him, and he is looking up into the night sky, stars swirling before him like they never did in the city. He sits up, dizzy for some reason, and looks around him. He’s in Lawrence, in a field where he, Dean, and Cas used to play baseball. And parked off near the road is Dean’s Impala.

Sam jumps to his feet, too excited to notice that he no longer has the hips of an old man, and he runs toward the car, shouting, “Dean!” But Dean is nowhere to be found. The trunk of the car is open, and Sam peers down into it. He wasn’t sure what he expected to see, but an arsenal of weapons hidden under a false bottom was not it. Or was it?

This feels right, like driving alone in the car never did. He gets a few flashes of something, some vague memories that aren’t his. And then nostalgia. Can a person miss something they’ve never had?

“Jeez, Sammy. You sure took a long ass time to die,” his brother says from behind him.

Sam whips around, and sure as shit, there’s Dean. He’s thirty again, and smiling, wearing his old leather jacket, with a shotgun in his right hand. Castiel is behind him wearing that stupid fucking trenchcoat, and smile big enough to rival Dean’s.

“We’ve been watching you from up here. Mr. Angel here pulled some strings for me. You got pretty bitchy toward the end,” Dean says with a smirk. “Anyway, hop in; we’ve got work to do.”

And then Sam remembers it all. It was like that second life he had with Jess never happened. He’d never had children or been a lawyer. It was just him and his brother, his brother’s angel, and a substitute father hunting down as many evil sons-of-bitches as they could. And he was at home, in the front seat of the Impala, with the smell of leather and gunpowder and body odor. With Bobby on-call, Cas behind him, and Dean to his left, driving.

“Jerk,” Sam says as they drive off.

“Bitch,” Dean replies.


End file.
